Planning For and Preparing an Emergency Drinking Water Supply

If you’ve kept up with any of the national news over the last few months, you’ve seen the issues this arctic weather has caused on not only the power grids but local water supplies.

The arctic-like temperatures have caused water mains to break and residential water pipes to burst in some cases. Once your primary water delivery system becomes compromised you now have to decide what you’re going to do.

If you haven’t prepared ahead of time, then more than likely you’re up shit creek if the outage or lack of water lasts for more than a few hours.

I’ve generally been prepared for most short term outages whether it’s the power grid or the public water system, but with the recent emergencies across the United States, I’ve made a few adjustments to my plan to extend the amount of time my household can go without our city water being delivered in the event of a compromised system. That compromise could be in the form of a water main break, extended power outage at the water plant or even worse, a poisoning of the main water supply system. We’ve seen one instance recently of a poisoned water supply in Florida.  With that all said, I’d like to share how I’ve structured my disaster planning for when I need to go to alternative water sources.

FEMA Recommendations for Disaster Planning

I go by the acronym PACE (Primary Alternate Contingency Emergency). When preparing for any disaster, having a PACE plan in place will give you peace of mind when shit hits the fan. I’m also basing my planning on what FEMA recommends for daily water consumption, so let’s lay that groundwork first.

FEMA recommends having 1 gallon of water per person per day for 3 days. My plan is to have enough for 7 days. If the outage goes longer, I have contingencies in place. That 1 gallon is primarily to be used for drinking/hydration, but also for general hygiene such as brushing your teeth and washing your hands and face. It can also be used for cooking as well, but make sure your hydration is the priority. Let’s calculate some numbers now to determine how we’re going to source and store all this water.

1 Gallon of water per day per person = 128 ounces = (8) standard 16 ounce reusable water bottles

In my case I have four people in my house, so that’s 32 16 ounce water bottles per day. For the 3 days water supply that FEMA recommends, that comes out to 96 water bottles for my family. For my 7 day plan that is a total of 224 water bottles. Holy crap that is a lot of water bottles! There has to be a better way to do this other than disposable water bottles.

Let’s go over my PACE plan to see how I’ve tiered my preparedness levels

Primary

My primary water source is my city water supply. This is when everything is running normally with no outages.

Alternate

Once there has been a declared water system outage, now we need to put our preparedness plan into motion. For me, I’m going to the commonly found 16-ounce water bottles that you can purchase by the case at your local grocery or convenience store. My threshold here is 3 days.

For my family, I have 3 days worth of water bottles on standby at a minimum. That’s a total of 96 water bottles. Once I hit day 3 of the outage, I’m going to start looking to make the move to the contingency stage of my PACE plan.

Contingency

Now that I’ve reached my 3-day threshold, I need to look to a longer-term option that can be sustained over time. At this point, if your primary source is still out, there is no telling how much longer it’s going to be, and you’re going to eventually run out of those disposable water bottles.

Now I’m moving to either my 55-gallon rain barrel or melting snow, depending on the season. My rain barrel is my go-to for 3 seasons of the year. During the winter in the northeast, everything freezes at some point, so the rain barrel does not become an option.

I’ll take the water from my rain barrel or melted snow and run it through my Big Berkey gravity-fed water filter inside my house. Another option for clean filtered drinking water, if you don’t need to worry about multiple people, is the Grayl Geopress water bottle.

The Big Berkey tabletop water filter contains 2 filter elements that are capable of filtering up to 6000 gallons of water before needing to be replaced. Now if my calculations are right, that will filter enough water for my family for 4 years before needing to replace those filter elements.

Now that’s impressive! People often look at the price of a Big Berkey and don’t want to spend that money. Knowing that it can filter water for a family of 4 for 4 years makes it worth the price of admission in my opinion.

If for some reason my contingency plan starts to dry up meaning I have exhausted all the water in my rain barrel or it’s not snowing AND my primary source has still not restored, we need to start getting creative. Now we’re entering an emergency state.

Emergency

When my rain barrel and/or melting snow is no longer an option and I still need a supply of water to hydrate with, use for basic hygiene and maybe some cooking, I’m looking at my hot water tank.

Generally, most people have a hot water tank in their house. At the bottom of the hot water tank somewhere there is a drain valve. Although hot water tank capacities vary, mine is a 50-gallon tank. That is 50 gallons of water I can take advantage of. Depending on how much sediment is in the water, I may opt to prefilter the water through an old t-shirt or something similar before running it through my Big Berkey.

Hopefully, I never need to move into the contingency portion of my plan, but I’m ready if the worst happens. I hope the above information is useful to you and helps you put together an emergency plan for you and/or your family.

Utilizing the PACE acronym for all areas of preparedness ensures you have a chance at surviving whatever gets thrown at you. I plan on doing another article like this, but for power/fuel storage when the main power grid goes down.